In which I upload a video (re: the California harvest)

Recently, independent filmmaker Dina Mande-Gould contacted me to suggest that my readers might like to know about her short web video series on this year's harvest in California's Paso Robles wine country. I visited her site, Paso Harvest Films, looked at her most recent posting, Episode 7, and found the film delightful. If you're fond of armchair traveling and want to have a peek at a real California winery, from the fields to the tasting room in films shot just in the last month, you might like this.



The winery featured is Clautiere, run since 1999 by former fashion designers/welders/landscape designers/restaurant owners Terry Brady and Claudine Blackwell. On the website's map, Clautiere is shown just east of the town of Paso Robles, which itself is located on California's southwestern coast about midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. That's a big stretch of territory to pore over, with your bifocals or without them -- but look for Pismo Beach ("and all the clams you can eat," as Bugs Bunny would say) and then move your finger north just a bit. You should find Paso Robles.

The town lies at the heart of the AVA, the American Viticultural Area, of the same name. It's in San Luis Obispo County, which is not an AVA itself, but which is part of the million-acre Central Coast AVA, and which -- the county, that is -- also contains the AVAs of Edna Valley, Arroyo Grande Valley, and York Mountain in addition to Paso Robles. Paso Robles is itself an amply sized AVA, weighing in, you might say, at over 600,000 acres. Compare the tiny size of El Dorado AVA, on the other side of the state in the Sierra Foothills, or Cole Ranch to the north in Mendocino County, which boast only about 400 acres and 60 acres respectively and produce, well, all those enchanting looking little wines that we none of us are likely to find on our grocery store shelves. A glass of Windwalker, anyone?

The point of all this name dropping is to fix, in my own mind, exactly whence cometh the California wines whose label appellations do show up frequently enough to start to sound familiar. Many labels, even on grocery store shelves, say Paso Robles. Quite a few even say Edna Valley or Arroyo Grande. Have you seen or purchased, for example, Adelaida Cellars, Claiborne and Churchill, Eberle, or Treana wines? They all hail from Paso Robles, where cabernet and zinfandel grow well, incidentally. And that makes them neighbors of Clautiere, which you can visit, virtually, above.

Thanks to Dina Mande Gould for her "shout out" as all the cool people say. I look forward to sharing more of her films, and I'm proud to announce I'm even sort of topical with this one. Her ten web episodes on the harvest were intended be finished in time to help celebrate the Paso Robles Harvest Wine Weekend from October 16-18 -- which event began, um, yesterday.